The Clockwork Place

About the author:
A deranged poet who is often kept up at night by her weird inner film reel. Though my tool of the trade is horror, I'm a pretty cheerful person by nature. I'm currently working on my first novel, a psychological horror story called Sunnygrove.
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Here's one of my latest vivid dreams. I wish I could have more of these, for they give me great ideas and burn off psychological steam like nothing else.

We wandered for a while through a hallway where the walls were made of old, stained stone, and the doors of heavily rusted metal. The tower was vast and mysterious, and for some reason several places in the floor were missing huge chunks as though somehow they had been melted away by acid or blown up previously, or they had merely grown old and collapsed. A friendly yet docile golden retriever followed me around as we explored. In my hand I held the small ornamental silver teacup which I had found on the floor in the kitchen/lobby, which I kept dropping or losing my grip on. Some inner narrative told me about a girl who was dragged by strange spectral creatures to an Abyss somewhere below for undesired traits or deeds she did in this place. I saw a mental image of her, sailing down a spiral staircase, mouth open in a silent scream as some monster clutched her wrist with a mottled green and purple claw. Surprisingly, her rage proved harmful if not fatal to these odd entities, for they often released her in the throes of pain she visited on them in her struggle for escape. Some of them even had severed limbs or much worse, but as she made it to the surface again, in no time they would come back for her and the same thing would be repeated. Some of them looked like massive worms, others like trolls, but all of them glimpsed hazily by my dream eyes.

Meanwhile up in the tower, I shivered from the cold air seeping in from the tower's only view to the desolate, cloudy, rainy, foggy world outside. The word clockwork comes to mind when I envision the city. Almost all was mechanical/artificial when I think about it and it seemed this place did not have many people at all. Things moved in the distance. One structure looked like an old rusty factory, another like a lazily turning windmill.

My parents stood out on a concrete porch-like place staring at the city as they wearily smoked their cigarettes, and for some reason I was upset that we were lost in this tower or something because I cried a little and couldn't stop shivering from the cold.

The dog followed everywhere, offering some form of guidance and comfort. I knew the monsters lay below in their realm, but was not afraid. Why?

Without a chain of events leading to this, I found myself in a warm slightly comforting lobby and kitchen, where wooden chairs and tables sat pleasantly with no one to occupy them. From a window flooded dim, lusterless light. I recalled picking up the teacup on the dark tile floor earlier because it looked pretty and meant something important, but then I had grown tired of carrying it with me and gave it to an Indian boy whose mother and father owned this place. Was it a hotel? Ugh.

We engaged in a short yet neighborly dialogue, as though we had met and known each other before, where I started by asking him if this teacup belonged to his mother, who was standing at the counter near the entrance. He said yes and I was mildly concerned that they would accuse me of stealing their ornament. Fortunately they did not.

The nameless girl continued to attempt freedom from the things that pursued her, and for a moment the dream teleported me into her point of view, where I, armed with the the ability to fight beings of unimaginable power, beat the crud out of those monsters, but they would always come back. This step into someone else's shoes was brief.

It seems I was switching between two people. One, the confused and lonely person who was quietly trying to find her way in this surreal place, and two, the girl who was angry and trying to get free yet at the same time enjoying the constant action. This dream was, however, more thought and scenery than emotion, and wasn't troubling.

I wish I could remember more, but the last thing that can be recalled is my mom, who was in some sort of room with me and we were talking about the dentist. She said her bottom teeth were going to be replaced soon and the dentist put in small metallic charms, apparently for bracelets, in their place until something could be done. She didn't seem to be bothered that there were various shapes and forms and symbols filling in some of her teeth, and then she turned away and began to try pulling them out.

Weird.

There were other elements to this dream that would be interesting, that is, if I could remember. There is a faint impression of some kind of deal, a contract, between my father and someone else, which isn't new, I guess. This place was also in many ways backwards in comparison to our world. For instance, there was a room in the tower with an upside-down ceiling or something. Crevices and holes lead to who-knows-where, and I remember investigating a few only to find emptiness or dull objects that the dog, who was still following me around, found a lot more interesting. Rumors were a faint occurrence, too, especially about the girl who fought the creatures. I remember someone, perhaps the Indian boy, talking about it and something else...

My family seemed to be seeking something important, and I don't recall if we ever found it.

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